


Nehan Dreams

by Airi_bitterstep



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Mild Suicidal Ideation, canon didn't give us a lot of magasin ocs, so I made my own, takes place post seeds of redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29731065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airi_bitterstep/pseuds/Airi_bitterstep
Summary: Nehan may not be willing to awaken and rejoin the real world, but that doesn’t mean he’s alone.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2





	Nehan Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr 7/31/2020
> 
> Reposting in honor of the 1st anniversary of Seeds of Redemption

When Nehan opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is the hallway of the Magasin base. From what he’d heard, it had been raided by the Enforcers, but there are no signs of that. No scorch marks on the white walls or gashes in the stone floor. There aren’t any people around either, which has never happened. **  
**

“Wow, this takes me back.”

Nehan whirls around, hand going to his holster which does not have his gun, even as he identifies the voice.

“You’re dead.”

The former pharmaceutical chief of the Magasin family has the exact same casualness as the last time he saw her. Messy hair, off-white lab coat, worn jeans.

“Sure am. What about you?”

“Me?” As soon as the word leaves his mouth, a memory of the inn at Affeils flashes through his mind. Putting that aside for now, he asks, “What are you?”

With a sly smile, she asks, “What do you think I am?’

He doesn’t want to play this game, so instead he asks, “Why are you here?”

“Why wouldn’t I be here? I’m your mentor.”

“I had other mentors.”

“You mean like this?”

Nehan blinks and there his former master looms, face twisted in a scowl. Something punches through his chest and Nehan doubles over, expecting to see blood splatter on the floor. His ears ring from the gunshot and– Nothing.

The phantom pain leaves and his hands come away clean.

“Maybe not,” the chief says.

When he looks up again, it feels as though time has passed, but he has no concrete evidence of that. He’s in the same hallway, once again alone. Curiosity drives him to take a quick look around the rest of the base, and he finds no sign of anyone else, living or dead.

He isn’t sure what to make of all this. By all accounts, he should be dead, so maybe this is a hallucination? It doesn’t seem like the afterlife, but he supposes he wouldn’t know.

The last room he has to check is his office. Bracing himself in case the chief, or someone worse, is in there, Nehan turns the knob. Like everywhere else, it’s devoid of people, but unlike everywhere else, it’s a mess. Papers litter the floor as though someone had upended all his folders. His desk is strewn with pens and used equipment.

He picks up the paper at his feet, skimming it to find that it’s the third page of an assistant’s lab report. He could just leave the room like this, but it isn’t as though he has anything better to do. Not while he’s waiting to die. 

The task takes a few hours as far as he can tell. But finally, everything is filed away or in its proper place.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” the chief says, looking around. “So? What’s the status of your last project?”

Old habits. Picking up the nearest paper, Nehan summarizes the results of his research.

“…and that was unsuccessful, so I will be abandoning that tactic and– Oh!”

“What is it?”

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.” Breakthroughs and experiments aren’t for him to pursue anymore. He lets the report fall back on the desk and stands. “I’m leaving.”

“That’s it?” the chief asks, watching him head for the door. “Come on, kiddo, you don’t want to follow that idea to the end? Where’s that curiosity that I liked so much?”

Rolling his eyes at the nickname he’d never been able to shake, he says, “I threw it away with everything else I didn’t need.”

“Nice try. We don’t get to cut away parts of ourselves that easily.”

“Maybe you couldn’t.”

“Watch it,” she says, voice beginning to rumble.

“Or what? You’ll kill me? That is how you’ve always dealt with traitors.” He braces himself for the consequences.

The next words are as clear as the sound of glass shattering, but they don’t come from the chief.

“Mugen brought flowers.”

Immediately, Nehan’s mind is racing to find an adequate explanation. He doesn’t know why or how Mugen got here, but that can wait; he has to make sure the family doesn’t take interest in Mugen, that they don’t find out about–

“What are you doing?” the chief asks. “I’m dead.”

…right. There’s nothing that this…thing wearing the chief’s face could do. Which means he can focus on the questions he’d pushed aside. He can’t see Mugen and the voice seemed to come from above.

His voice has faded to the point that Nehan can only make out the shape of his lurching sentences. Mugen finishes speaking and then there are two more voices. Nehan can’t make out their words either, but he recognizes the speakers. The Eternal twins, Feower and Tien.

“So, why do you think you haven’t died yet?” the chief asks.

  


Time is difficult to keep track of, but over the span of what must be weeks, Nehan learns that his body is in Stardust Town and Mugen is looking for “something fun” that will wake him up. 

Mugen isn’t the only one who visits either. The children will also talk to him, recounting their day or activities they enjoy. Currently, a child is reading a story aloud to an audience. A fairy tale that he recognizes, even with the voice fading in and out.

Nehan sits on the steps of a building in Stardust Town. He isn’t familiar enough with the layout to know what it’s used for and he has no desire to find out. He would prefer to not be in this town, but it had built itself around him and he can’t seem to find a way out, no matter how far he walks.

One of the younger children interrupts the story to ask something about a liver.

“This bring back any good memories?” The chief is perched on a well wall, head slightly tilted as she listens to the reader’s uncertain tone as they answer.

“What good memories?”

“Didn’t you like teaching the new assistants?”

“I didn’t _like_ teaching them. You just foisted them on me because you didn’t want to do it.”

The chief grins. “I was just nurturing your skills as any good mentor should. Besides, you do a lot of extra teaching for someone who doesn’t like it.”

“The faster they learn, the less work we all have to do.”

“That wasn’t what I was referring to.”

He doesn’t need to ask her to clarify. He’d poured over a year of work into teaching Mugen words and…everything else. Progress had come slowly but Mugen had been excited to learn and eager to please, and it had been satisfying when he’d finally grasped whatever concept Nehan had been trying to explain. But satisfaction wasn’t enough of a justification.

‘If meeting him was the worst outcome, why didn’t you just ignore him?’ Xing had asked.

As though he knows the answer to that. But it doesn’t matter now.

  


Sleep isn’t the right word for it, for obvious reasons, but he isn’t sure how else to describe the moments where his consciousness can’t even conjure up the dream world. It’s a nothingness that swallows up time and thought. Not an unpleasant way to exist.

Right now, though, Nehan comes back to himself in the old laboratory. The Magasin had had to burn it down a while ago to keep it from falling into the hands of a rival gang, but now he’s sitting on the stool at his old work station.

“Do you think anything would make up for the things we’ve done?” the chief asks. She’s leaning back against a desk, legs crossed.

Nehan stares at her and, instead of answering, says, “The chief believed wholeheartedly that what she did in the name of the Magasin was justified. What are you?”

“That’s not really the question you should be asking.”

Irritated, he asks, “Then what is?”

“Why am I here? Or, no. Why do you want to see me so badly?”

Like most deaths in the Magasin, the chief’s had been violent, abrupt. No chances for goodbyes or tying up loose ends. But that was just life. There were people he cared about far more whose deaths he never had closure for. This shouldn’t be the one at the forefront of his mind.

“If you don’t want to ask that, then what about this? What are you going to do next? Are you going to make amends for the things you did?”

“I gave the Enforcers everything regarding Serenity Heaven.” He glances at their stores of materials for a moment before continuing, “And for the people who are dead because of me, nothing can make up for that, especially not to their loved ones. I’m dead now and that’s the best they’re going to get.”

And there’s no one left who would avenge or mourn him, so any cycle of vengeance stops with him. Maybe that’s fate too.

“…fight…protect town. Protect Nehan!” Mugen’s voice makes his ears prick up and he sits upright on his stool. The pride in his tone is obvious, but he also seems…tired?

“Seems like they could use your help,” the chief says.

Maybe that’s why he’s still alive. He hasn’t overheard anything from the Eternal twins or any of the other visitors about what they want from him, most likely it’s information. Perhaps the Enforcers were unable to track down all the Magasin.

“You don’t feel obligated to help them? After what you put them through?”

‘No,’ he almost says. Remorse isn’t something he feels, not for the people he’s killed, not for the lives he’s ruined. He regrets it, maybe. He wishes he hadn’t done it. But all of that was fate and if he were to go back, he would make the same decisions again. Except…

He had specifically engineered his last encounter with Mugen to break any ties between them. So that Mugen wouldn’t go looking for him.

Stardust Town was a place where children went to survive.

‘Cockroaches,’ his former master had spat. ‘Vermin that need to be exterminated.’

Nehan preferred to think of them as bindweed. Deep-rooted and almost impossible to kill without considerable effort. They took in children from all over and all of that is why directing Mugen there had been the right decision.

But his words, ‘I hate you…I can’t thank whoever it is enough for taking you off my hands.’

He’d take those back if he could. But even so…

“It’s better if he just lets me go.”

“You’re worried that he won’t forgive you.”

He is, but also, “I’m worried he will.”

She dips her head in the way that meant she found an assistant’s hypothesis far-fetched. “I don’t think he’ll hold a grudge.”

“He should.”

“He might be a little too stupid for that.”

“ _Shut up_.” He’s glaring and on his feet before he’s aware of it.

She smiles, fox-like, and he’s suddenly reminded of who he’s talking to and why he’d never trusted her, no matter how relaxed her demeanor. “Touchy.”

Not sure how to respond, he takes his seat again and looks away. Running his fingers over the table’s surface, he reminds himself that she’s dead and that any display of weakness will not harm him.

Once he’s certain his tone will be calm and even, he says, “Either way, it’s irrelevant. They can’t keep me alive forever.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Can’t they?”

No. Sooner or later, his time is going to run out and this will end. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  


He’s lying faceup in a grassy field, though he can’t place where he saw it. Pulling up a fistful of dirt, he lets it crumble in his hand and exhales.

The sky is blue, but just shallow enough to expose its fictitiousness. His mind supplies edges that shouldn’t be there, unable to conjure up unending space. And the sun’s rays aren’t as bright or warm as they should be. As though they’re being passed through a filter.

“If you want to die, why not just wake up and do it yourself?” the chief asks from somewhere above his head.

Belladonna and cicuta spout around him, purple and white. He has the knowledge for it; he just needs the will. He reaches out, grabbing the stem of the nearest flower, but just holds it.

“But that’s not you, is it? You’ve never been one to quit.”

It feels as though the sky rushes down to fill his lungs and crush him. Its weight makes him dizzy and he feels as though he’s outside of himself when he murmurs, “Maybe that’s my biggest flaw.”

He catches her say, “I wasn’t great at it either,” before his consciousness slips away.

  


“…do it!” a girl’s voice says. “…say… heart.”

The following voice is one Nehan would recognize anywhere, even though he’s only heard it a handful of times.

“Nehan…”

His eyes snap open and he jolts up. The field is falling away into a different landscape, grass wilting to create well-trodden paths. Around him, the buildings are reconstructing themselves and Nehan runs.

“How long…asleep?”

Traps he knows like the back of his hand, wires and pitfalls. He never would have been fast enough to avoid them as a child were it not for his memory of their locations.

“…I said…wanted…live.”

He passes the council room (3 bodies had been there), the primary training grounds (7), and the playing field (5). The splattered blood had dried from dark red to a brownish hue and he does not check if his memory has placed them there.

“…still want…”

He’s in the cluster of houses now. The names and faces of all the residents threaten to overwhelm his mind, but he forces them down. The house where he, his sister, and parents lived is the sixth one down, second to the right, and he does not look up.

“I know…nothing…expect…”

Beyond the houses is some of the cropland, then an empty field that gives way to the forest. It’s only once he’s safely in the trees that he allows himself to stop, leaning against the rough bark to stabilize himself.

The next words are as clear as the glint of a knife. “Mugen is waiting for you to wake up.”

He would wake up right now, just so he could tell Xing to _shut his mouth_. He never asked Mugen to wait for him. He never expected…

Xing’s voice fades into a murmur that has a note of finality and, a few moments later, Nehan is certain he’s once again alone.

“Would you go back to finish your revenge?” the chief asks from behind him.

He doesn’t turn around. “No.” 

“So that’s it? Everything is just water under the bridge?”

His family is dead. Final battle or not, true heir or not, that doesn’t mean he’s forgiven Xing.

“Of course you can’t let it go. You’re Magasin.”

And he was a Karm. They hadn’t been able to let go of things either.

“Why are you here?” he asks, instead of continuing that pointless conversation. 

“Why did you want to see me?” she returns.

He faces her, feeling as though his emotions are welling over and about to wash him away like a flooding river. Caution and rationale and fear have all been swept downriver, out of reach, so he asks, “Why did the Magasin mean so much to you? Same as me, you weren’t born into it, but you were so loyal to it and then you died.”

The chief puts her hands in her pockets and sighs. “And this is where I tell you that I don’t know. I’m not her, just a mental recreation based on your memories, so if you don’t know then neither do I.”

“…right.” He should have known it wouldn’t be worth asking.

“But let me tell you why you care about this. None of us can escape being tethered to things, whether it’s out of obligation or loyalty or revenge, and whether it’s to organizations, ideals, or even other people. You wonder what would have happened if fate hadn’t put me in the Magasin or if there had ever been a desire to escape them for a different life. And you’re never going to find that out.”

She steps toward him and lightly taps him on the shoulder.

“You, though, are still alive, still tied to things in the real world and, if you want, you can stay here and keep ignoring them. Or you can decide you want to do something with them and wake up.”

He’d been offered so many things: passions, atonement, revenge. All of that, he would let wither away with him without another thought. But his bond with Mugen which somehow still survived?

The forest fades into another one, dilapidated church and mass grave replacing the clearing. It’s the island where he found Mugen. The prison that had also served as Nehan’s only escape from the Magasin, even if it was only for a short while.

He still wants to apologize, but maybe it would be better not to. He needs to break the ties holding them together, no matter what, because he can’t be something that’s only going to drag Mugen down.

And after that… He’ll figure it out.

Looking up at the chief who’s watching him patiently, he says, “I’m going to leave now.”

She smiles at him and he’s reminded of the last time he saw her. “Then goodbye.”

Everything is blurring and fading away, but he still manages to find the words to say, “Thank you for everything. For the things that helped.”

Shrugging, she waves at him. “No problem. Good luck, kiddo.”

The world flashes white and for a brief second, there’s nothing. And Nehan opens his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I built this sentence by sentence because i care about this character for some reason. Thank you for reading!


End file.
